That's interesting, because I too had a facebook friend post something about the Portland shooting. It claimed that some dude took out the shooter, and that was why only two people died. I didn't have time to look into before work today.

That's interesting, because I too had a facebook friend post something about the Portland shooting. It claimed that some dude took out the shooter

Some dude with a gun did kill the shooter -- the shooter. With his own gun.

Only two people died because the shooter started by announcing himself, firing at the ceiling and alerting everyone, fired some more rounds quasi-randomly, had his weapon jam, got it working again and then killed himself. In short, he just did a really shitty job of what he was trying to do assuming he was trying to kill more people.

Edit: This story is some guy saying he pulled out a weapon. Despite not firing it, he credits himself as the reason the shooter went off downstairs and killed himself.

Quote:

Nick Meli is emotionally drained. The 22-year-old was at Clackamas Town Center with a friend and her baby when a masked man opened fire. "I heard three shots and turned and looked at Casey and said, 'are you serious?,'" he said. The friend and baby hit the floor. Meli, who has a concealed carry permit, positioned himself behind a pillar. "He was working on his rifle," said Meli. "He kept pulling the charging handle and hitting the side." The break in gunfire allowed Meli to pull out his own gun, but he never took his eyes off the shooter. "As I was going down to pull, I saw someone in the back of the Charlotte move, and I knew if I fired and missed, I could hit them," he said. Meli took cover inside a nearby store. He never pulled the trigger. He stands by that decision. "I'm not beating myself up cause I didn't shoot him," said Meli. "I know after he saw me, I think the last shot he fired was the one he used on himself." The gunman was dead, but not before taking two innocent lives with him and taking the innocence of everyone else. "I don't ever want to see anyone that way ever," said Meli. "It just bothers me."

Yeah, he said he watched the guy the whole time from behind his cover. But all the reports say the shooter's gun jammed, he fixed it, then went downstairs and then shot himself. The article title says "confronts" but even Meli doesn't describe actually confronting him or even drawing attention to himself. While it's theoretically possible that the shooter was so worried that he went downstairs to go shoot himself, I'm thinking there's a whole lot of conjecture there. I'm not doubting that Meli had a gun or drew it. I'm certainly not convinced, however, that the shooter saw it and reacted to it in any significant way to quickly end the ordeal.

Also, the shooter fired off around sixty rounds during the event. Sixty. The reason only two people died wasn't because he saw supposedly some guy with a gun and was to worried he went downstairs and shot himself. The reason only two people died was a combination of him being a poor shot, him giving a lot of warning and him not really shooting to kill for a lot of those shots. Had he taken the element of surprise and aimed those sixty rounds at people instead of the architecture, there would have been a lot more than two dead. It's fortunate that he didn't.

I support CHL and personal firearm ownership to no end, but I also agree that clips above a certain capacity and semi-auto rifles / shotguns are not necessary for any personal use imaginable.

Honestly though, I think background checks need to be more thorough. Create a federal handgun license (a la Illinois's FOID card) and establish a fee commensurate with a background check similar to the one given to those seeking top secret clearance. Existing background checks require little more a check against the FBI's NICS database and in some cases, a minimal waiting period.

The mother of the Newton shooter was clearly on the fringe of sanity (as are most doomsday preppers), and likely exposed her son to a warped view on the legitimate and proper use of her firearms. Combine that with mental health problems and it was a ticking time bomb from the start, but absent a criminal record or a reported mental health issue, neither would have made it on the list and either one could have obtained said weapons with little effort.

And yet people go through the effort and expense of amassing firearms, ammo and accessories for these killing sprees rather than dropping $10 at Home Depot for a bomb making kit. Which would suggest that, for whatever reason, they're not especially capable of or interested in making bombs but shooting people with guns and bullets.

The whole "they would just use [X]" argument is a lazy one on several levels.

Edited, Dec 15th 2012 1:50pm by Jophiel

Like I said, it's a lot more exciting to actively shoot someone, rather than set up a bomb and waiting.

It's a bit like the government response to McVeigh that Joph quoted: exert irrational levels of control over a fear you can define, instead of getting to the root of your fear and seeing it for what it is. We all do it, but that doesn't make it a healthy response.

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Should require training and annual qualifications for those civilians that want weapons.

I think this is a requirement for concealed carry in new york, although the qualifications are 3/5 years instead of annually. Not sure if this is how it works for normal purchasing as well though. This topic is one of the ways I've been procrastinating studying for my finals so I've kept myself from properly researching everything since it'd take a decent amount of time. Been too busy studying for finals to look everything up.

You also need a good enough reason to carry concealed in NYC, as the licensing officer can deny your permit, and it needs to be renewed every three years. I've got it because I do security escorts for sensitive equipment, which personally I find to be a pretty shoddy reason to be able to carry a pistol whenever and where ever I want hidden on my person, but there you have it.

Not just concealed though, I think any weapon ownership should require it, from hunters to collectors to law enforcement. It's stupid someone can basically walk into Walmart and pick up a rifle.

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When I worked for an environmental company you were required to have a gun with you when going out to do field work in some areas (notably much of Alaska), as to have extra protection against wildlife and such. I'm plenty accepting of reasons like "the wolves are eating my sheep," and "I drive an armored car full of cash."

Gun control isn't about stopping people from killing, it's about limiting the damage when some nut decides to do so.

You'll save a few lives right off the bat because most people are squeamish, even among the nutjob crowd most people that would kill with a gun wouldn't be likely to kill with a knife/bat/crowbar, it's too intimate. Nor would most of them take the time to figure out how to build a bomb, among those who would take the time to work out a bomb most of them would fail to make anything particularly efficient.

In countries where assault rifles aren't readily available people just don't think about shooting up schools full of children, well, I'm sure they think about it but it's quickly discarded as unfeasible because the logistics of doing so are ridiculous. There's no glory factor in stopping to reload your 12 gauge every 3 rounds while everyone hops out the windows and some big janitor tackles you.

Organized crime can generally get the more efficient killing machines, most of those are coming out of the US because it's like buying chicklets down there, but organized crime really has no interest in killing masses of innocent people.

Most guns are just too **** efficient, easy to use, and unneccessary to be readily available to random Joes.

If there's one side of things that I'm interested in going forward, it's in architectural design for the schools. Sad that it's come to this, but the science of designing for choke points and means of egress is probably going to get a lot more attention now.

#117gbaji,
Posted:Dec 17 2012 at 3:04 PM, Rating: Sub-Default, (Expand Post) I'll repeat my earlier observation. Unless you can somehow completely repeal the 2nd amendment, those who wish to commit mass shootings will always be able to obtain the weapons with which to do so. The only rational and consistently proven method of preventing such mass shootings is if someone else is in the area with a weapon themselves. Yet, for some irrational emotional reason, we tend to actively ensure that the areas we least want a mass shooting to occur at those which are the easiest targets for mass shootings. Gun free zones don't prevent a mass shooter from entering the zone and shooting people. What they do is ensure that there's no one else there to even have a chance of stopping them.

In 1927, a single man's outbreak of violence in a small Michigan town took the lives of 45 people, including 38 children. The Bath School Disaster became the nation's deadliest killing spree at a school, and it still holds that distinction today.

If there's one side of things that I'm interested in going forward, it's in architectural design for the schools. Sad that it's come to this, but the science of designing for choke points and means of egress is probably going to get a lot more attention now.

Edited, Dec 17th 2012 4:03pm by Eske

One of the difficulties of putting in choke points in a school is going to be fire codes. Have fun designing a public building that has choke points and is easily escapable in case of a fire.

In 1927, a single man's outbreak of violence in a small Michigan town took the lives of 45 people, including 38 children. The Bath School Disaster became the nation's deadliest killing spree at a school, and it still holds that distinction today.

To which we responded by arming everyone else with sticks of dynamite so they could fight off other dynamite armed attackers. Right.

gbaji wrote:

I'm sure that someone else has pointed this out, but if someone prevents it from becoming a "mass shooting" then the data set doesn't tell us what you seem to think it does. They aren't mass shootings *because* someone with a firearm prevented them from becoming one. Here's a site with a short list of potential mass shootings prevented by the use of a firearm.

The article is clear about its criteria and why it selected them. Most accounts of "stopped a mass shooter" I've seen rely on very circumstantial evidence that the a "mass shooting" was in fact stopped. Often they are something like "Shooter shot two people and was then shot leaving the location when he might have gone on to kill more people". Or the shooter had a direct group of targets (revenge, etc) and was killed after the direct altercation with them when there is no indication that the shooter intended to start killing random people.

Also, quite a few of the items off that list involve off-duty or former law enforcement. At least a third; I didn't read the linked articles to every one and some don't mention on your collected page that the CCW person was law enforcement.

The supposed correlation in the second article is a joke. The guy shot up the WI temple because of its cultural implications, not because he thought "Sikh temples don't have guns!" This last guy had a connection to the school and likely went there because it was filled with children. We don't know why the CO shooter picked that specific theater.

I'll repeat my earlier observation. Unless you can somehow completely repeal the 2nd amendment, those who wish to commit mass shootings will always be able to obtain the weapons with which to do so. The only rational and consistently proven method of preventing such mass shootings is if someone else is in the area with a weapon themselves. Yet, for some irrational emotional reason, we tend to actively ensure that the areas we least want a mass shooting to occur at those which are the easiest targets for mass shootings. Gun free zones don't prevent a mass shooter from entering the zone and shooting people. What they do is ensure that there's no one else there to even have a chance of stopping them.

So if everybody had a gun, they wouldn't attempt it? Or do you mean that everybody without a gun would quietly calm down and not panic, stay out of the way of the the guys shooting, and helpfully identify who is the agressor and who is protecting them so the police or anybody else don't shoot the wrong guy?

I'm not sure what these theoretical zones are, that are deterring mass killers from choosing them because they are known to have armed inhabitants. Shooting ranges? Gun convention halls? Police stations? Fort Knox? The killers choose sites like malls and schools because there are large numbers of people in an enclosed space, and/or they know it'll get a lot of media attention, and/or they are copying previous massacres (subconsciously or otherwise). Number of killers who were going to commit a mass killing in a gun store, only to be deterred by the fact that the owner would be armed: zero.

I'm sure that someone else has pointed this out, but if someone prevents it from becoming a "mass shooting" then the data set doesn't tell us what you seem to think it does. They aren't mass shootings *because* someone with a firearm prevented them from becoming one. Here's a site with a short list of potential mass shootings prevented by the use of a firearm.

The article is clear about its criteria and why it selected them. Most accounts of "stopped a mass shooter" I've seen rely on very circumstantial evidence that the a "mass shooting" was in fact stopped.

That's meaningless though. It only becomes a "mass shooting" if it *isn't* stopped. I think it's quite reasonable to assume that if even a single member of the school staff at Sandy Hook Elementary had been armed, that at least some lives would have been saved, and quite possibly most or all of the children given the order of events.

Quote:

Often they are something like "Shooter shot two people and was then shot leaving the location when he might have gone on to kill more people". Or the shooter had a direct group of targets (revenge, etc) and was killed after the direct altercation with them when there is no indication that the shooter intended to start killing random people.

Except for the cases which don't. Not all shootings are identical Joph. You're contriving reasons why someone with a firearm will magically be less able to prevent a mass shooting than someone without. So teachers dying while vainly trying to shield children with their bodies is heroic and reasonable to accept, but the same teachers would never have the courage to shoot the armed assailant? That seems a bit unlikely to me.

Quote:

Also, quite a few of the items off that list involve off-duty or former law enforcement. At least a third; I didn't read the linked articles to every one and some don't mention on your collected page that the CCW person was law enforcement.

Are you aware of how many off duty/former law enforcement and military there are running around our country? I'm not sure how this magically becomes a negative. At best, you make a great case for further loosening restrictions on CCW permits. You get that you're basically arguing that it wouldn't be effective because not enough people have them, right?

Quote:

The supposed correlation in the second article is a joke. The guy shot up the WI temple because of its cultural implications, not because he thought "Sikh temples don't have guns!"

So? Correlations need not be 100% to have value.

Quote:

This last guy had a connection to the school and likely went there because it was filled with children.

So? Doesn't change the fact that if schools were not gun-free zones, someone might have been there to stop him before he killed 20 kids.

Quote:

We don't know why the CO shooter picked that specific theater.

And yet, he also followed the same pattern that the author was talking about. Is it perfect? No. Is it a worthwhile correlation to point out and maybe take into account? Absolutely.

I'll point out again though that a shooting event only becomes a "mass shooting" if the shooter intends it to be a mass shooting and no one stops them. There's a massive selection bias in your position because we only label something a mass shooting based on the number of people actually shot and killed. We are thus automatically excluding all cases where someone spotted a potential mass shooting and interrupted it before it became a mass shooting in the first place. We're also only seeing the locations where mass shootings actually occur, and not all the locations they might have occurred at if conditions had been different. If every single school had several staff members who had weapons on campus, might someone who wanted to kill a lot of children avoid going to a school to do so? Might that person even decide on a different type of target, or even a different act in order to make his violent statement?

We can't know for sure all the possible alternatives which might happen. But we can say that right now we've made schools incredibly easy targets for people who decide to use a mass shooting to make some kind of statement. And that's the point being made by this.

Yes. Get past your knee jerk opposition to the idea and think about it. Do you think someone intending to kill a bunch of school kids will be deterred by the fact that he's also breaking the law regarding guns within a given radius of a school? All we accomplish with those laws is to ensure that when someone decides to go kill a bunch of helpless people, schools become the really obvious target because everyone will be a helpless target. There *can't* be any armed person on or near the campus of the school.

I'm not saying arm the kids, or allow teachers to have loaded guns in their desks. But heaven forbid the campus security have firearms, or some of the administrative staff. If just one person had been so armed at that school last Friday it's almost certain most or all of those children would be alive today. I can't think of a single reasonable restriction that the gun control folks could create that would accomplish the same thing. Restrictions on types of guns wont work. Even the most basic types clearly protected under the 2nd amendment would be sufficient for large scale killing in an environment where no one has any firearms to oppose the killer.

I know that it's sometimes hard, but think with your head and not your heart.

And not every cut will get infected if you don't clean it properly. So there's no reason to clean cuts properly?

There's a difference between a cut and an amputation.

If the amputation occurred as a result of an infection brought on by not cleaning a cut, what then? Boy would you feel silly that you didn't clean that cut because it wasn't an amputation.

Clever little comments aside, anything which can actually prevent shootings from becoming mass shootings are worth doing, even if not all shootings will become mass shootings. Again, what's the downside? We might stop a guy who only intends on killing a few people? Not seeing the problem here.

Yes. Get past your knee jerk opposition to the idea and think about it. Do you think someone intending to kill a bunch of school kids will be deterred by the fact that he's also breaking the law regarding guns within a given radius of a school? All we accomplish with those laws is to ensure that when someone decides to go kill a bunch of helpless people, schools become the really obvious target because everyone will be a helpless target. There *can't* be any armed person on or near the campus of the school.

I'm not saying arm the kids, or allow teachers to have loaded guns in their desks. But heaven forbid the campus security have firearms, or some of the administrative staff. If just one person had been so armed at that school last Friday it's almost certain most or all of those children would be alive today. I can't think of a single reasonable restriction that the gun control folks could create that would accomplish the same thing. Restrictions on types of guns wont work. Even the most basic types clearly protected under the 2nd amendment would be sufficient for large scale killing in an environment where no one has any firearms to oppose the killer.

I know that it's sometimes hard, but think with your head and not your heart.

Yeah, thinking with my head, I can still see how that's a bad idea. Incidences of mass shootings at schools might decrease in your scenario, but I can see how other gun violence would go up.

#135gbaji,
Posted:Dec 17 2012 at 7:46 PM, Rating: Sub-Default, (Expand Post) I'd say "could" and not "would". It would only go up if you assume that people working in current gun-free zones who might obtain CCW permits and have their guns with them in those locations would be more inclined towards inciting gun violence if they had those permits and the ability to carry them in current gun-free zones. I'm not sure how that could be much of a factor though. Unless you assume that the only thing preventing the asst principle at the local elementary school from getting drunk in a bar and shooting someone is that he can't bring his CCW onto school grounds (or doesn't have a CCW permit because he can't bring his weapon onto school grounds), that is.

Let me present this another way: Imagine a state where CCW permits are already allowed, but they are not allowed to be carried in a school zone. So overall gun crime as a result of CCW permits is not a factor. We're just looking at whether schools should be "gun free zones". What are the benefits of having that gun free zone around the school compared to eliminating it? To me, the zone does nothing to protect the children in the school (which was the whole point), and does nothing with regard to gun crime elsewhere, but it does ensure that no one can act effectively to prevent a mass shooting at the school.

That's it. It's literally the only effect such laws have. I mean, who do you think is loitering around a school with a firearm such that they might be caught violating such a law? The only people affected by such laws are otherwise law abiding citizens who might carry a firearm with them for any of a number of reasons, but who now have to leave those firearms home (or in their car) when entering such a zone. Anyone actually intending some kind of violence with their guns isn't going to be stopped by the law. Only those who might stop him will be.

Other people with guns seems to be the only thing that prevents shootings...? That seems a bit odd considering the countries with much lower gun violence than ours who have a ban on guns.

Personally, I think the real answer is addressing mental health issues. Look at Canada. They don't ban guns, but they don't have mass shootings every other year either. I personally think its because everyone there has access to a mental health professional and the means to pay for it (universal healthcare).

But hey, maybe it's really hat every single man woman and child in Canada carries a concealed weapon and that's why gun violence is less prevelent there.

hey, USA only has 4.2 homicides per 100,000 people. That's really good by world standards. Of course, it's at least 4 times the amount of other OECD nations, which generally don't have cultures of gun carrying. Even most of the police don't carry as a matter of daily practise.

I personally think its because everyone there has access to a mental health professional and the means to pay for it (universal healthcare).

Psychology isn't covered by the government outside of special circumstances, you'd have to be referred. We have our share of crazies, but we have enough safety nets that those crazies don't hit rock bottom as often and the ones that do can't get automatic weapons and other assault gear.

We have pretty good gun control here. Need an FAC to purchase a gun, can only obtain specific types of weapons (hunting rifles, shotguns is pretty much the limit up here without some special permit), There are barrel length limitations etc.

Unless you deal with the military the average person will probably never see an automatic weapon in Canada outside of TV. It's a big deal to find a few handguns in a house here.

Other people with guns seems to be the only thing that prevents shootings...?

Ask yourself why the shooter in this latest case stopped killing kids and turned his weapon on himself. It was the arrival of people with guns (the police). I think it's quite obvious that the only thing that stops such shooting is either running out of ammo, or other people with guns. It would therefore make sense that if we want to prevent the whole "running out of ammo" outcome, we might want to focus on getting other people with guns in the area as quickly as possible.

Quote:

That seems a bit odd considering the countries with much lower gun violence than ours who have a ban on guns.

Irrelevant to my point. I'm assuming that we aren't amending the constitution to remove the 2nd amendment anytime soon. So banning all guns isn't an option. Within that constraint, the current course of the anti-gun organizations seems either completely ineffective, or actually makes gun crime in the US worse.

#142gbaji,
Posted:Dec 17 2012 at 9:08 PM, Rating: Sub-Default, (Expand Post) Yeah. I meant to reply to that part as well. Gun control in Canada is about as close to outright banning as you can get without actually banning all guns. It's a degree of restriction that can't exist in the US under the 2nd amendment.

No need to read futher. You are, as usual, going on hypotheticals. What I am seeing is could and should which mean nothing.

Stronger, firmer laws against guns could and should solve these issues, but it could also increase death tolls. Make it easier to obtain and conceal carry, it could scare the bad people enough not to shoot at anyone, it could also let loose some trigger happy idiot.

hey, USA only has 4.2 homicides per 100,000 people. That's really good by world standards. Of course, it's at least 4 times the amount of other OECD nations, which generally don't have cultures of gun carrying. Even most of the police don't carry as a matter of daily practise.

That's meaningless though. It only becomes a "mass shooting" if it *isn't* stopped.

That's true.

I think it's quite reasonable to assume that if even a single member of the school staff at Sandy Hook Elementary had been armed, that at least some lives would have been saved, and quite possibly most or all of the children given the order of events.

That's preposterously idiotic. The dynamics of people under tremendous stress aren't automatically improved by making sure more of those people can deliver lethal force easily. What is quite reasonable is that the rate of accidental shootings at schools would increase from zero to some non zero number as a result of armed staff on site.

I'm sure one of us has dedicated a large part of their life to studying this sort of thing, the application of violence against civilian populations, it's motivations, causes, and techniques to minimize negative effects. On the other hand, one of us is a know it all douchebag who makes wild guesses based on his hilariously limited anecdotal life experience. Let's set that aside, though.

The whole "If XYZgroup had guns...etc" argument is quaint and simplistic, so good for TV etc. It does have a few small problems. In the public sector there's the issue of the massively enormous cost of training, liability protection, etc. It would be billions. To accomplish what? To save 15 kids a year in the utopian fantasy best case? Most private schools probably aren't going to bother, at all. Dalton and St Paul's and other elite private schools already have armed security personnel, but random XYZ for profit charter school squeezing every penny out of $25k a year non union teachers isn't about to cut into the bottom line.

Gun control may or may not prevent this sort of thing from occurring as frequently, but it almost certainly would lower the overall homicide and severe injury rate in the US. There are valid arguments that there are potential negative consequences around selective enforcement, creating another source of revenue for criminal organizations, and many more. There's also the issue of the complete lack of complexity involved in manufacturing rudimentary firearms. Anyone with even a slight amount of mechanical aptitude and access to simple tools can smith a functional rudimentary semi-autmoatic in a day. The reductio ad absurdum argument against gun control is fairly compelling. Crazy ******** will make bombs instead. Unless you ban brass and springs and stock iron, millions of people will be able to manufacture completely unregulated largely untraceable weapons with increasing levels of sophistication as they acquire skills and proficiencies they didn't care about when they buy a Glock at Wal Mart.

None of that happened anywhere gun control was enacted, but none of those places are really very demographically similar to the US.

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Probably something you might want to consider, in the US at least, while gun ownership has increased, the homicide rate has also fallen. Kinda blows the whole, "more guns=more homicide" argument.

Wow, no. Kind of blows the "incredibly complicated social trend can be distilled into one minute factor" argument, though. If 90% of people in a population smoke and then the next year 95% of people smoke but lung cancer rates decline, I guess that whole "more smoking means more lung cancer" thing is kinda blown.

____________________________

Disclaimer:

To make a long story short, I don't take any responsibility for anything I post here. It's not news, it's not truth, it's not serious. It's parody. It's satire. It's bitter. It's angsty. Your mother's a *****. You like to jack off dogs. That's right, you heard me. You like to grab that dog by the bone and rub it like a ski pole. Your dad? ***. Your priest? Straight. **** off and let me post. It's not true, it's all in good fun. Now go away.

That photo fails to mention the compulsory military training. But then, none of the people here in the US saying that teachers should have guns are mentioning compulsory military training either so I guess it works out.

Other people with guns seems to be the only thing that prevents shootings...? That seems a bit odd considering the countries with much lower gun violence than ours who have a ban on guns.

Personally, I think the real answer is addressing mental health issues. Look at Canada. They don't ban guns, but they don't have mass shootings every other year either. I personally think its because everyone there has access to a mental health professional and the means to pay for it (universal healthcare).

But hey, maybe it's really hat every single man woman and child in Canada carries a concealed weapon and that's why gun violence is less prevelent there.

If a Government routinely solves its problems by threatening and then more often than not using, violence, why is anyone surprised when its young, impressionable and socially inept citizens learn from their example?

Especially when that example is promoted ad nauseum by that countries film/television/advertising industry.

Mental health services availiable for everyone would maybe catch a few potential killers, but its really the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff 'solution', no?